Year B Lent 1 A Covenant For All

Year B Lent 1, 18 February 2018 

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA 

“A Covenant for All” 

Collect: Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. 

Genesis 9:8-17 God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.” 

1 Peter 3:18-22 Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you-- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him. 

Mark 1:9-15 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 

Richard Rohr, Franciscan priest and spiritual leader, says, “All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If your religion is not showing you how to transform your pain, it is junk religion. It is no surprise that a crucified man became the central symbol of Christianity.” 

If you think about it, we are surrounded by interesting symbols. They can be confusing and shocking, if you have not become numb to what is at face value.  

The Cross is one of the most cruel torture devices ever created. Let us hang you up, stretching your body out, till you diaphragm cramps and you suffocate in horrible pain.  

Here let us take bread and wine, but call it flesh and blood. Bizarre names for a symbol we partake in weekly. 

Today I want to give us pause and look deeply at some of the things we take for granted to our detriment. And in this holy Lent, where we strip away the niceties, and focus on what is most important, there could not be a better time.  

Symbols of death surround us. The Cross. The Eucharist. The baptismal font, where we bury ourselves with Christ, to rise up again in new life in him. As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, “I agree with the Baptists in total immersion, I just disagree with how much water we need to use.” We are immersed into Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, oh, and let us do that to babies. 

Today, in our readings, we tie the Flood of Noah to Baptism. And the absolute cleansing of the earth is so important and pivotal, and this will begin a series for us, looking at the Covenants of God and with God throughout Scripture.  

The reading from Genesis assumes that we already know of the story which it just related, and it repeats itself repeatedly, redundantly redundant for emphasis to show the importance. But the key element is the first Covenant of God in Scripture.   

Now a Covenant is more than a contract. A contract is something we still use, and we still need. Can I get an Amen from at least the lawyers in the room? Contracts in a pre-literate age were done in community, with the elders and leaders as witnesses. Covenants were something more. They were between often unequal parties, and included punishments if conditions were not met. Lastly, there is some touchstone, often a big pile of rocks that marked a covenant. 

Here we see the Covenant conversation between Noah and God. Pay attention to who does the speaking… 

God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  

This Covenant is entirely one sided. God promises to us, all of us, Noah and his descendants, all the animals, too, that never again will he flood the whole earth. And what is the touchstone here? The mark that we can point to if there ever is a breech of this promise? The Rain Bow. The Bow in the clouds. 

We started today looking at the symbols of death we surround ourselves with in our faith, transforming these symbols of destruction into signs of God. The Rain Bow is no different. Now I was a child in the 70s, and I was surrounded by rainbow junk in my foundational years. I think that is one of the reasons Noah’s Ark was such a popular Nursery theme amongst my generation when we started having kids. But the Bow is not a bow on a package. The homonym trips us up. Bow, not ribbon, but Bow as in weapon, Bow and Arrow Bow. God hangs his Rain Bow in the Clouds promising that he will not aim it at us ever again. Look how God hangs it. It points up, not down.  

God is promising that never again will rain destroy all of the earth. And symbolically, and we will get into this on Wednesday when we have our Lenten Dinner and Book Study, Creation was about bringing in the order and abolishing the Chaos. The Flood let the Chaos back in and God stepped away, for a while. God is promising to all of Creation that Order will be re-established, and this weapon of mass destruction will be put away. Thanks be to God! 

This is the first frame, the Noahic Covenant, where God promises rule and assurance to all Creation. And in the coming weeks we will step it in. Moving from the Universal to the Personal.   

And in 1 Peter, we have him speaking of the Flood, Chaos Incarnate, as a prefigure of our baptism: God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you-- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…  

Baptism does not wash away the dirt, but it is a stepping out of Chaos into the order and certainty of life in Christ. It is an assurance of a bond with the one who is the “Author and Finisher of our Faith.”  

In our Gospel, we have the very abbreviated account of Christ’s baptism, and his immediate driving out into the Wilderness. (And note that the Wilderness with the wild animals is another symbol of that Chaos.) And Jesus in his post-baptismal state brings fasting and prayer into that Chaos, for even in the worst, God and God’s Rule is alive and present.  

This past week I have been blessed to be with some folks who are going through Chaos. God does not cause it, and God does not bring it. But even in our worst, the Wilderness of our lives, God is present and Angels, often unaware to us, minister to us in the Depths and the Darkness. 

I come back to the Rohr quote I started with today. “All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If your religion is not showing you how to transform your pain, it is junk religion.” We preach a Christ Crucified; we preach a Jesus that weeps. We look to a symbol of death, the mockery of the Roman world, and from it we will be saved. (More to come on that one in a few weeks…) Life brings the best and the worst, and the Promise of God we read of today is a recognition that we need to remember in this holy Lent. “Yea, even though we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death the Lord is with us.” Even when it feels we have hit bottom, we find two things. The bottom is solid, and God is even here. Thanks be to God. 

We surround ourselves of the signs of death. Many of us even marked ourselves this week with Ash, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” A mark of death upon our very brows. We have had four deaths of immediate family members in the last week amongst those in the St. James the Less family.  It is heartbreaking, and one of the inevitable parts of life. Yet even here, ‘Bidden or unbidden, God is present.” (Erasmus) 

In this week where we were reminded of our own mortality, and in deep sadness on the day we dedicate to love, we had another tragedy. Those of us who are parents were reminded that we are not promised another day. I missed the reports on the radio because of a busy day, and did not hear the news till I was on my way home. While I was marking many of you with the sign of the cross in ashes, reports were coming in of 17 dead in another school shooting. Do we need help throwing off this mortal coil? It is heartbreaking that we have had any of these tragedies over and over and over again. Yesterday I was thinking on this hard and deep. Both sides were entrenched. One claiming rights, afraid of losing something. One claiming the senseless killing has to stop, afraid that this will happen again, and again, and again. One statistic jumps off the page. We are the only country in the world where we have this repeatedly. And we are the only country in the world there are more guns than people. It is more than a gun problem, or a heart problem, or a sin problem, or a mental illness problem, or a fear problem. It is all of these. And more.  

Somewhere along the way many of my friends began to idolize, and I mean that term in a biblical sense, they began to idolize the Constitution, specifically the Second Amendment. And anything we put before God is idolatry, plain and simple. Some of you may have already checked out because I have gotten into politics, but this is from a pastor’s heart which is broken, broken from the senseless loss, broken from the inability of loving and reasonable people to work together for the common good. I have always seen personal liberty in this country to be about doing what one should, instead of whatever one wants.  

As we are in Lent, maybe we should give up arguing and get busy working toward sanity. How is it easier to buy an AR-15 than to get a license to cut hair? Something, many things, are just not right. And even here, when we are our own worst enemies, I find that God is present, and weeping with us. God does not want to smite us. God is working to have us be our best, fullest selves, and wants us all to come home to him.  

Again, “All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If your religion is not showing you how to transform your pain, it is junk religion.” 

As we continue during these somber days, look closely, delve deeply, and know you are not alone. We walk this path together. And we follow the one who knows the way. Amen.